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BY GREG HALL
Last month the thirteen members of
the Truth Justice and Healing Council
(TJHC) met for the first time to begin the
challenging task of assisting the Church in
its response to the Royal Commission into
Institutional Responses to Child Sexual
Abuse.
Council CEO, Francis Sullivan, told Aurora
that the calibre and depth of experience of
the Councillors were impressive and came
into their own during the day-long meeting,
held in Sydney on 15 April.
In a statement released following the
meeting, the Council's role was defined
as threefold: to oversee the Church's
engagement with the Commission; to
develop new policies to protect young
people, and to ensure the Church
responds to any future complaints with
justice, putting the needs of victims first.
On the TJHC's first agenda were a great
many administrative matters, Mr Sullivan
said.
These included a detailed presentation
of and discussion around the "complex
document procurement process of the
Royal Commission".
The council also discussed the best way
"to continually communicate, engage
and inform the Catholic and Australian
communities of its work and the progress
of the Commission", Mr Sullivan said.
Describing the work ahead as difficult,
Mr Sullivan said that Council members
"were committed to helping the Church
approach the Royal Commission with
openness, courage and humility to enable
reconciliation and lasting healing to take
place.
"We are fortunate to have an extremely
experienced and diverse group of men
and women to guide our work.
"Through our members we have expertise
in child sexual abuse and its impact,
including trauma, mental illness and
suicide," he said.
Members are Chair, Justice Barry O'Keefe
AM QC; retired magistrate from WA, Dr
Sue Gordon AM; Brisbane's Archbishop
Mark Coleridge; senior research fellow in
the Social Work and Social Policy School,
University of Western Australia, Prof Maria
Harries; CEO of Sane Australia, Jack
Heath; Associate Prof Rosemary Sheehan,
Department of Social Work at Monash
University; former South Australian
Education Minister, Greg Crafter AO;
Brigidine Sisters' former Congregational
Leader and Chair of Australian Catholic
Religious Against Trafficking in Humans, Sr
Maree Marsh CSB; Maitland-Newcastle's
Bishop Bill Wright; lawyer, academic and
Vice-Chancellor of Australian Catholic
University, Prof Greg Craven; Bank of
Melbourne Chair, Ms Elizabeth Proust
AO; Stephen Elder, Executive Director of
Melbourne's Catholic Education Office and
Dr Marian Sullivan, a Queensland-based
child and adolescent psychiatrist.
News of the Council's appointments,
made in a joint statement by the Australian
Catholic Bishops Conference president,
Archbishop Denis Hart, and Catholic
Religious Australia Chair, Sr Annette
Cunliffe RSC, became official only hours
before the Commission sat for its first
formal hearing on 3 April in Melbourne.
In words that could easily have been
spoken from any pulpit, to a packed court
room, the Commission's Chair, Justice
Peter McClellan, said, "Part of the task
given to us by the terms of reference is to
bear witness on behalf of the nation to the
abuse and consequential trauma inflicted
upon many people who have suffered
sexual abuse as children."
Reiterating comments he made in
January with the Royal Commission's
formal announcement, Justice McClellan
stressed that it was important for the
community to understand the Commission
was not a "prosecutorial body".
To that end the Commission had
established links with "appropriate
authorities" in each state and territory
to which "a matter may be referred with
the expectation that where appropriate,
prosecutorial proceedings may
commence.
"Our investigative processes will be used
to receive and consider what we expect
will be accounts by individuals of their
experience when living within or when they
were associated with an institution."
On the question of reparations, Justice
McClellan stated that the Commission
had "not been tasked with determining
whether any person may be entitled to
compensation for any injury which they
may have suffered".
Justice McClellan also said that the inquiry
would be expensive. Having already spent
$22 million in setting up the commission
(fitting of premises, IT system installation
and other resources), "running costs,
including the costs of travel and resourcing
commissioner hearings throughout
Australia, will mean that the work of the
Commission will continue to require the
commitment of very significant sums of
public money".
So large was the task, both in terms of
the number wishing to give accounts
and the number of institutions impacted
by allegations, it was "unlikely the
Commission would complete its work"
in time to meet the current deadline for
delivery of a final report in 2015, he said.
However, the commissioners proposed to
use the time between now and the delivery
of the interim report (currently scheduled
for 30 June 2014) to complete "as much of
our task as we can and when that report
is delivered, Government will be able to
make a judgement as to the future course
which the Commission should take", he
said.
But in another reference to the enormity
of the job ahead, Justice McClellan
said, "From the information which the
Commission has been able to gather,
I believe it may be difficult for us to
complete a proper investigation and report
on more than six institutions between now
and the time of the interim report.
"Our enquiries indicate that most
institutions are not immediately able to
provide the Commission with documents
which record their internal management
practices and the manner in which they
may have dealt with complaints of child
sexual abuse."
In welcoming the Church's repeated
commitments to co-operate in full with
the Royal Commission, Justice McClellan
said that the Commission had been in
discussions with the CEO of the TJHC,
"and we understand that the work of
collecting and organising the documents
held by the Catholic Church in its various
manifestations has commenced. It is an
enormous task."
So, like the Royal Commission, the TJHC
is on a steep administrative learning curve
as it ramps up its organisational function
to fulfil its brief.
Much work and enormous challenges lie
ahead for the Council, led by Canberra
lobbyist and veteran campaigner, Mr
Sullivan. And while it involves navigating
the complex trail of record-keeping
and documentation, which some
commentators, like the Global Mail's
Stephen Crittenden, argue lies at the
very heart of whether the Commission's
inquiry will be declared a success or
not, for Mr Sullivan, it is also a process
of "prosecuting a narrative" around the
Church's story in these events.
"We have to get back to our identity as
a Church and what we are about and
the bona fides that drive us; not what
appears to be the more constrained and
constricted narrative we have created
around this [sexual abuse issue] due to our
legal advisors.
"I suppose the first signal I'm hoping to
As a Church, we have
to think of atonement
We are not some type of clever spin
machine for the church
send people [is] that we are not trying to
defend the indefensible, neither are we
some type of clever spin machine for the
church leadership. We are seriously trying
to send a signal that we are into dialogue
here."
He acknowledged that in the current
climate that is going to be tough, "and I
don't think people will believe us for a long
time".
"So I think the Council needs to say, 'Look,
you can't change the past, but at least
let's be real about it.' Secondly, we need
to demonstrate that we are fair dinkum
about child protection and the prevention
of sexual abuse.
"We need to be honest about what drives
that, what are the aspects of our own
church culture that have contributed
to it and show that we are going to do
something about that," Mr Sullivan said.
Referring to the Council's title, Mr
Sullivan said that it pointed to a truth and
reconciliation process that had proved
successful in other countries.
"We can't just point to the Royal
Commission process and say, 'If we do
this, well we have done our job.'
"As a Church we have to think of our own
sense of atonement. Let's face it, part
of our core business is a skill set that is
meant to be [about] reconciliation, so we
need to be able to think creatively how
reconciliation is going to happen, how
people who have been victims and are
now living with it, can feel that they can
belong to a church, that they don't have to
feel isolated, that they don't somehow feel
that they were part of a problem, that they
don't have to feel ostracised, because I'm
sure some do.
"And you know, there is no place for those
experiences in a church. The first thing
Church is about is community."
Greg Hall can be found at @Truthtypist
or gmhmedia@me.com Read his earlier
Aurora article at www.mn.catholic.org.
au/aurora (March 2013).
CEO of Truth, Justice and Healing Council,
Francis Sullivan.
5
www.mn.catholic.org.au Catholic Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle
FEATURE